Legal terms for early stage investments and Legalese

Startups and investors are bound by legal agreements, from inception to IPO the legal terms are critical to the development of a company. Although counting on professional legal counsel is necessary, a good understanding of the main legal terms, mechanisms and documents is of great help when investments happen.

An investment round, no matter how small, is more complicated than the typical contract, because it involves multiple parties and multiple agreements required by law. After 60+ financings, JFDI.Asia developed Legalese to streamline the process of early stage investment, reducing a process that usually takes months to days.

BANSEA and TiE are organizing a joint presentation covering the key legal aspects to look at when investing in early stage companies

RHTLaw Taylor Wessing will introduce the key legal terms and documents in a 45m session

Introduction to Legalese, a great tool to produce legal agreements for start-ups, developed by one of our BANSEA and TiE Member, Mr. Wong Meng Weng from JFDI.Asia.

Prerequisites: An account on Google Drive. Please bring your laptop to the workshop.

Takeaways: In this workshop, you will learn:

good understanding of the main key aspects applied to early stage investments.

what paperwork is needed to issue a new round of shares or convertible debt

how pro-rata rights work and why you need sign-off from previous shareholders

how to characterize your deal in the form of a cap table

what online resources are available for doing an early stage deal

how to use Legalese to produce agreements and send them for execution

how to use Legalese for other agreements such as an NDA or vesting ESOP

the differences between a SAFE, a KISS, a convertible note, and Series AA.

Workshop Presenters

Speaker: Meng Weng Wong Meng is deeply engaged with the startup ecosystem as an angel investor, a board member of the Indus Entrepreneurs and the Business AngelNetwork of South-East Asia, and as founder of JFDI.Asia, Singapore’s first seed accelerator.

The co-founder of Hackerspace.SG, he also volunteers as a mentor with the Founder Institute and an Entrepreneur in Residence at the INSEAD Business School. At JFDI.Asia he mentors startups from idea to investment-readiness in 100 days, and continues to coach founders on leadership and management until they reach Series A funding.

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The Business Angel Network of Southeast Asia is an organisation registered in Singapore with the express intention of supporting and growing the early stage investment ecosystem in Southeast Asia.

Information on this website is not intended to be, and shall not be interpreted as, solicitation of funds, and where such intention is not clearly expressed, shall rest strictly within the intent of providing information on early stage investing.